shoot to kill

idiom

: to shoot a gun with the purpose of killing someone

Examples of shoot to kill in a Sentence

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And even when the distressed person threatens them with a weapon, police don’t always shoot to kill; in the case of Faisal, an officer fired only after a nonlethal sponge round failed to slow him. Laura Crimaldi, BostonGlobe.com, 3 June 2023 Another military intervention by Moscow in another former Soviet state with clear echoes of the Cold War. Bolstered by the Kremlin, the president's regained a fragile control, ordering his forces to shoot to kill. ABC News, 9 Jan. 2022 The act grants soldiers wide-ranging powers to search, detain, arrest or shoot to kill people and gives them immunity from prosecution unless the government makes an exception, which rarely occurs. Washington Post, 6 Dec. 2021 Shoot to kill, see an antifa, shoot to kill. Dallas News, 12 Oct. 2022 They are trained to shoot to kill. Alaa Elassar, CNN, 7 July 2022 But now, primarily through crowdsourcing, human rights groups and activists are beginning to document a reign of terror that got underway well before the shoot to kill order. New York Times, 31 Jan. 2022 The order now are shoot to kill. ABC News, 9 Jan. 2022 Those stories, including a recent piece on why the police shoot to kill, not wound, can be found at sltrib.com/shotsfired. Matt Canham, The Salt Lake Tribune, 16 Nov. 2021

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Cite this Entry

“Shoot to kill.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shoot%20to%20kill. Accessed 30 Dec. 2024.

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